DS constantly losing glasses - any tips?

[MumwithAspieTraits]

Hi, we are a neurodiverse family including us adults and doing our best. All HFA. DS is long sighted and needs his glasses to easily read his school books and his band music. He can 'get by' without them but it is hard work for him.

DS finds it hard to keep track of his belongings so we and the school have supported him in this, for instance he has a fluorescent coloured school bag, a place he puts it every day, and he has trained himself into a routine to look for his bag when he gets up. His retainer goes into a special mug every morning when he gets up in the morning (after multiple retainers lost trying to use the little boxes they come in).

We are trying to think of a routine for his glasses. They were missing again this morning. I am not so great at remembering to ask him about them when he gets in, as I also have executive functioning issues.

I've been struggling to come up with ideas for a 'routine' for the glasses. He comes in wearing them, puts them in his blazer pocket, then he has his bath, and the blazer goes on the floor. I or he pick up the blazer and put it in the laundry bin, forgetting the glasses are in there. Then we find the glasses later on - in the pocket - and return them to him.

This morning the system broke down. He came home yesterday with the glasses on, but there were no glasses in the blazer pocket when I picked it up off the floor today.

I know things could be improved if he put the glasses in their case in his school bag, but he never ever does this despite being nagged.

Any ideas, the would be suitable for a person with HFA who needs a habit and routine and a special place for things to remember anything? (Me and him both).

Thanks.

I don't have HFA but I have a son who does, and much experience of juggling reading glasses and distance glasses between home, work and driving.

The key for me is having multiple items. I have a home pair of distance glasses and an out of the house pair, which live on my steering wheel. At home I have a downstairs pair of reading glasses and an upstairs pair. It's not that things never go wrong, but that they are easy to put right again.

I would suggest DS have an outside pair of glasses that live in his blazer pocket. When you wash his blazer, you ask him to empty his pockets (or you do it for him) and anything he needs to keep goes straight into his school bag so it's impossible for him to leave the house tomorrow without them. We do this with DS laminated timetable. It doesn't always get back into his pocket before he leaves the house, but it always goes to school with him. Maybe DS could have a pot by the front door where his indoor glasses live, and he swaps them when he takes his shoes off. But even if they get mislaid, his school glasses would still be sat in his blazer so would go to school tomorrow by default.

With the washing, we have a routine that whoever puts something in to wash is responsible for emptying pockets first. When you have done so, you turn the legs or sleeves inside out which signals that the pockets have been emptied. Then when I come to sort the washing, I only have to check the pockets of any right-way-round blazers or jeans, rather than all of them. It's not foolproof but it works most of the time. It's ingrained in me though, I grew up with it.

I'm not sure why the blazer is ending up on the floor, but maybe a bigger hanging loop or better hook would help. DS's never goes into the washing basket. We only have one so it goes straight from hanging by the front door to the washing machine. Again, separate indoor things and outdoor things so the blazer gets hung up as soon as he enters the house.